Vodafone Mobile Connect Card Driver for Linux

User's guide

Enrique Matías Sánchez


Table of Contents
1. Getting Started
2. Connecting to the Internet
3. Controlling usage
4. Sending and receiving short messages
4.1. Addressbook

1. Getting Started

Vodafone Mobile Connect Card driver for Linux is a tool which will allow you to stablish a connection to the Internet using 3G cards. It will also allow to send and receive short messages from your computer. The currently supported cards list includes some of the more popular cards. This list can be consulted in the installation manual.[1].

In order to use your 3G device, you should run a fairly recent version of the Linux kernel. You can find out which version you are using by firing a termunal emulator (such as gnome-terminal or konsole) and then typing the command uname -sr. Vodafone Mobile Connect Card Driver for Linux has been tested on Linux 2.6.17 and newer. If you have an older version installed, we would recommend to update it before going on. Your distribution of choice will most likely provide recent versions of the Linux kernel, downloadable from the Internet.

Note

Using Option GT cards with Fedora requires installing nozomi's kernel module RPM package, provided at Vodafone Betavine's Forge.

On Debian-based systems, your username must be a member of the "dip" group in order to be able to stablish an Internet connection. You can find out which groups you are a member of by issuing in a console the command groups. If you are not a member of the group "dip", you can add yourself by executing addgroup fred dip, replacing "fred" by your username.

On other systems, such as Fedora, you will need to have gksu o kdesu installed in order to be able to connect to the Internet. Those programs will ask for the superuser's password before stablishing the connection.

Plug your 3G device to the computer, following the directions found in its userguide. Depending on the model you own, you will have to insert it in a PCMCIA slot, or attach it to the USB ports. Some Linux versions have trouble recognizing some card models. You could need to plug and unplug several times the card, in order to the system to properly recognize it.

You are now ready to start using your 3G device on GNU/Linux.

Launch Vodafone Mobile Connect Card driver for Linux. It can be done using the desktop environment menus, or issuing this command on a terminal: vodafone-mobile-connect-card-driver-for-linux.

Tip

If you find any kind of problem while using this tool, try launching it with the command vodafone-mobile-connect-card-driver-for-linux-debug. This will show additional info on the console, which will help you to diagnose the problem.

First time you run the program, you will have to do the initial setup. The program will automatically recognize the card model, but you will have to specify your preferred kind of connection.

Initial setup

GPRS (General Packet Radio System) is not a high speed connection, but as it is based on the already existing technologies, its coverage is nearly absolute. On the other hand, 3G is a broadband connection, but as it is a recent technology, there are areas where it has not been deployed yet.

Setting the technology to be used

Generally, it might be wise choosing the 3G preferred option. This way, the system will try to connect using 3G technology. If that is not possible, it will fallback to GPRS.

Over the splashscreen a popup window will ask you to enter your PIN (Personal Identification Number) which was provided together with your SIM card (Subscriber Identity Module).

PIN request

Be careful when typing your PIN; if it is introduced wrongly for three times, the card will be blocked, and you will need your PUK (PIN Unblocking Key) to unblock the card.

Wrong PIN

The application will then read the messages and contacts stored in your SIM, and will show its main screen.

Notes

[1]

If you are a programmer, it should be easy to make it work with other cards. Please see the developers' documentation included with the source code.